A court battle over the use of a judge\u2019s middle name on the ballot is heating up a normally sedate Orange County judicial race, with one candidate accusing his opponent of \u201chiding behind a misleading name\u201d and an attorney for an incumbent judge questioning whether she is being targeted for a \u201cforeign-sounding name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles Pell, in a lawsuit filed against the Orange County Registrar of Voters, is challenging his opponent\u2019s effort to appear on the ballot as \u201cAmi S. Sagel\u201d rather than her full name of Amy Sheth Sagel. Pell is challenging Sagel for the Orange County Superior Court judge position that Sagel currently holds.<\/p>\n
Pell, a veteran federal prosecutor, alleges that Sagel is \u201cattempting to appear on the June 2, 2026, primary ballot under a previously unused name that is not the one voters know,\u201d contending that she has \u201cfor years been known professionally, publicly and judicially\u201d as \u2018Ami Sheth Sagel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sagel, in her own court filings, counters that the \u201cuse of one\u2019s proper middle initial is not misleading.\u201d Sagel also alleged in court records that a decade ago, Pell advised a colleague \u201cthat the way to win a judicial election was to target judges with \u2018f\u2014-d up names,\u2019 \u201d adding that \u201cTen years later, he is trying to take his own advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
County Registrar Bob Page\u2019s office has not taken a side in the lawsuit, but has asked for a prompt court decision in order for the office to get the county\u2019s voter information guide printed and released on time.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was assigned to a San Bernardino judge to avoid any conflict of interest in the Orange County courts.<\/p>\n
During a hearing on Friday afternoon, Sagel\u2019s attorney, Mark Rosen, told Superior Court Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr., \u201cWe think it\u2019s an open-and-shut case\u201d because there is no violation of election law \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe candidate gets to choose which name is on the ballot, not the opponent,\u201d as long as there is no intent to mislead, Rosen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is such a trivial lawsuit,\u201d Rosen continued. \u201cShe is being picked on because she used a foreign-sounding name, and we can only wonder what the motivation is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosen later said outside court that he believes Orange County voters, who have elected lawmakers such as Rep. Young Kim and Rep. Dave Min, would not likely reject Sagel for her national origin.<\/p>\n
Sheth is of Indian origin, Sagel said after the hearing. Her parents were born in the Asian country, she said.<\/p>\n
Pell\u2019s attorney, Bradley W. Hertz, told Judge Schneider that there was no racist intent behind their challenge to Sagel\u2019s ballot designation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe name could be Jones or Smith or any other name,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cWe believe the use of the name should be consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pell, in an interview after the hearing, said he believes Sagel should use the name by which she is known as a judge: Amy Sheth Sagel. that\u2019s how it is listed in the Orange County Superior Court judicial assignments.<\/p>\n
Pell said he initially planned to stay retired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still looked out there and I saw the opportunity,\u201d Pell said. \u201cShe was one of the only ones that was recently appointed (2023). She had bad ratings (from people who appeared before her in Family Law Court). So that\u2019s why I focused on her. Our whole argument is this: If you choose to invoke the position you have, judge of the Superior Court, then you should have to use that (name).\u201d<\/p>\n
There was also discussion about Pell\u2019s ballot designation, which has been approved as Federal Criminal Prosecutor. Pell retired in September 2025<\/p>\n
Hertz suggested a compromise: Pell would change his designation to retired federal prosecutor if Sagel would use her full name on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really splitting the baby,\u201d Hertz told the judge. \u201cIt\u2019s giving everybody a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosen rejected the offer.<\/p>\n
Deputy Orange County Counsel Suzanne Shoai told Schneider that they needed the ruling by March 27. Schneider said he hoped to post his ruling online by Monday.<\/p>\n
Pell and Sagel are both long-time members of the local legal community, who have crossed professional paths during tenures at the local U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Sagel was a federal prosecutor for five years before starting her own private legal practice and then being appointed as a judge in the Orange County Superior Court by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.<\/p>\n
Pell spent 20 years as a federal prosecutor, in recent years leading public corruption cases against former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do and former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu.<\/p>\n
In response to Pell\u2019s lawsuit, Sagel wrote in her own court filings that her maiden name is Ami Harshad Sheth, but that she took her husband\u2019s last name when they were married in 2013. Her husband, Brett Sagel, is also a veteran federal prosecutor known for high-profile white-collar-crime cases who previously worked in the same U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office as Pell.<\/p>\n
Sagel wrote that she sometimes uses her full name \u2014 such as on legal documents \u2014 and sometimes uses Ami Sagel or Ami S. Sagel, \u201cconsistent with how all of us exercise control over how our names are rendered in different contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pell \u2014 in contending that Sagel is using a \u201cnever-before-used variant\u201d of her name \u201ccreated solely for this election\u201d \u2014 contends in his court filing that he wasn\u2019t challenging a \u201cminor formatting issue,\u201d but instead arguing that \u201cvoters in a judicial race are entitled to accurate identifying information.\u201d Pell accused Sagel of \u201crunning away from her record,\u201d which he alleged \u201cpaints a picture of someone who doesn\u2019t have a good temperament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another former colleague of Pell\u2019s in a written statement to the court submitted by Sagel recalls that in February 2016, Pell gave her the unsolicited advice that she should consider running for election against a sitting judge with \u201ca f\u2014-d up name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sagel wrote that she was \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by Pell\u2019s argument since she was \u201cgenerally aware of the historic practice of highlighting a candidate\u2019s foreign-sounding name as a disadvantage in elections and of placing at issue how a woman\u2019s name should appear on a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court battle over the use of a judge\u2019s middle name on the ballot is heating up a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1312,723,138,989,100,136],"class_list":["post-229407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-elections","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}